Ezetop: Recharge Friends and Family Worldwide

October 11th, 2010

I am really excited to introduce to everyone my newest client, ezetop. I don’t always (or often for that matter) blog about my clients, but I’m really excited to be working with such a forward thinking company in the mobile remittance space and so I wanted to take this opportunity to share a little bit about who ezetop is, what they do, and why you should remember who they are! For my international readers and for those with friends or family abroad in other countries, I’d encourage you to check out their service.

ezetop is the largest, fastest growing international company focused on international and online mobile phone top-ups. They are headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and also have regional offices in Miami, and in Dubai, UAE. They enable people living or working abroad to instantly top-up mobile phones of family and friends back home. Services are available from over 121,000 retail stores across North America, Europe and the Middle East region as well as from their website.

When I lived in the Philippines last summer as a Kiva Fellow, I got a quick crash course in the remittance market. It’s one of those things that for anyone who has spent any time abroad, they would know about, but for many of my friends and family, they had not heard about it before. So let’s start from scratch. In many countries around the world, one member of a family lives and works in a country where they can make a larger salary than they could back home. For example, in the Philippines, a family member might work in the U.S., Canada, Malaysia or UAE. Their jobs vary from a domestic worker to a professional role, but regardless of the job and title, one thing remains the same - they are working abroad to save money and send a significant portion of it back home with hopes of making enough money to either bring their family to the country they live in, or go back to their home country.

So the question becomes, how do they send this money back home? Less than 10% of the world’s population has a bank account. To send money back home they can send it through a Western Union or cash remittance, send it with another family member or friend (that can be official or unofficial) or use another type of remittance. As the mobile market bursts, many people around the world are using their phone not just for personal use, but for business use as well. In most parts of the world, people don’t have cell phone plans like we do here in America. They buy minutes, or load as it sometimes called and when they are low they “topup” or “buy more load.” That’s something I heard every day in the Philippines, there are markets on ever corner selling cards where you can buy various increments to load onto your phone.

See where I’m going with this? Mobile remittance! That’s where ezetop comes in. They provide a service for people to send money directly to someone’s mobile phone. Simple, quick and without the exorbitant fees of a cash remittance service.

How does it work? You can send a top-up instantly to a mobile phone. For family and friends back home, it is an easy way to send support instantly and cost effectively. All of this can happen in three easy steps:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on services like ezetop. Have you ever used a mobile remittance service? What did you think of it? Check out ezetop and I welcome your feedback about their service. Like I said, I’m really excited to be partnering with this and am always looking to my own online and offline communities to keep me on my toes!

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Sloane Davidson is a writer, speaker and spokesperson who blogs about positivity, perspective and prosperity at The Causemopolitan. She is a philanthropy advocate and the author of The Giving Manifesto. Her writing has appeared on Tech Cocktail, The Daily Muse, Modern Loss, and Medium. A frequent public speaker, Sloane has spoken at SXSW, Social Media Week, Columbia University and the United Nations. She was named a top influencer at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative and “Top Woman to Follow” on Twitter by Forbes.